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Summary of "The Inappropriately Excluded"

The late Michael Wells Ferguson was the author of the article "The Inappropriately Excluded", which I consider a classic and a must-read. Many highly intelligent people dream of reaching high positions in society, such as becoming university professors or winning the Nobel Prize. Ferguson shows that professors, doctors, judges, etc. are on average not that smart and that people with far above average intelligence usually do not get into these positions. The reason is not that these people have shortcomings but that highly intelligent people are systematically discriminated against. <<In the popular culture, IQ has become a point of contention. Many people credulously accept that the eminent have very high IQs and that people of ordinary accomplishment have ordinary IQs. For example, it was widely reported that Garry Kasparov has an IQ of 190. In truth, his IQ is verified to be 135.>> <<Over an extensive range of studies and with remarkable consisten...

The Internet – from the ‘democratisation of knowledge’ to a surveillance state à la 1984?

How the Internet was celebrated in the 1990s: access to knowledge suddenly became much easier. Everyone could educate themselves. In addition, freedom of expression reached a new level: anyone could create a website and write whatever they wanted on it, accessible to everyone. But from the very beginning, dark forces were at work in the background, viewing the Internet primarily as a means of controlling the population. Intelligence agencies built up extensive databases on every single inhabitant of the world, based on what they revealed about themselves on the Internet. As realistic-minded people have long recognised, running a website or blog now poses a risk: because everything you reveal about yourself can be used against you. But that's not all: posts on social media or other channels can also be monitored and evaluated. As people spend more and more time on the internet and many administrative procedures are already carried out online, the dark forces have more and more oppor...

Which professions are particularly suitable for someone with an IQ of 140?

According to ChatGPT, an IQ of 140 is well above average (approximately 2 - 3 standard deviations above the mean) and corresponds to roughly the top 0.5% of the population. This does not automatically mean that a person is ‘capable of anything’, but rather that they have a very high level of general problem-solving, abstraction and learning abilities. However, whether someone is suitable for a profession also depends heavily on personality traits, interests, motivation, social skills and resilience. Professions that are typically performed particularly well by people with very high IQs are those that: involve highly complex analytical or creative tasks, require a high degree of abstraction, enable independent thinking and pioneering work. Typical fields: Science & research Theoretical physics, mathematics, AI research Basic research in natural sciences or humanities Philosophical or logical basic research Technology & development Complex software development, algorithm design C...

Reprogramming Bacteria for Symbiont Conversion: A Review

Bacteria are prokaryotic cells some of which have positive effects upon the human organism and some of which have negative effects. I coined the term “symbiont conversion” for methods that convert, or reprogram, bacteria (and other cells, such as tumor cells) that have a negative effect to cells that have a positive effect. With such methods the urgent problem of antibiotic resistance could be solved. [Volko2025] This short paper is about such methods, but in a more broad context – I want to review different approaches towards the reprogramming of bacteria and not necessarily in the context of symbiont conversion, although symbiont conversion is the motivation for doing this literature survey. Basically a literature survey shows that there are two different approaches towards the reprogramming of bacteria: On the one hand, bacteria can be reprogrammed by altering their genes, for example by using bacteriophages (viruses that target bacteria) or methods like CRISPR/Cas9. These approache...

The Misery of Transhumanism

Face it: all the ideas presented in the book “Homo Ex Machina”, published in 2023, are already old! Be it gene editing, cryonics, longevity: people were already philosophizing about them in the 1990s. For me, it was a motivation during my studies to contribute to the implementation of these ideas. But to this day, most of these ideas have remained just ideas. Legal hurdles and technical difficulties stand in the way of implementation.  In fact, the only future technology that has already been implemented is artificial intelligence. The difficulty with gene editing is that germline therapy is banned in most countries around the world. However, certain diseases cannot be cured with somatic gene therapy.  I recently wrote about longevity in the Prudentia blog. There are ideas here too, but nothing has been implemented yet. I have my doubts about the feasibility of cryonics (resuscitation after death).  The only biomedical idea of the transhumanists that could soon become re...

History of Computers

The first mechanical computer was built by Charles Babbage (1791 – 1871). It was called the Difference Engine. Its successor, the Analytic Engine, is especially noteworthy. Babbage’s girlfriend Ada Lovelace was the first programmer in history. In the 20th century Konrad Zuse was the first to construct a working computer. Wikipedia writes: “The Z3 was a German electromechanical computer designed by Konrad Zuse in 1938, and completed in 1941. It was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer.” (The Z3 – Source: Wikipedia) Alan Turing and John von Neumann are to be credited with theoretical models how a computer works. Then the USA became the leading nation in computer building, with the ENIAC completed in 1945. In the late 1970s, finally home computers became available for ordinary people to be bought in specialized shops. One of the most popular home computers was the Commodore 64, which was succeeded by the Commodore Amiga 500. With home computers, ama...